The Toronto Blue Jays are without doubt one of the most popular professional baseball teams around. They were originally founded in 1977, and after a slow start they enjoyed some extremely successful seasons in the Eastern Division of the Major League Baseball’s American League between 1985 and 1993. It must be said that since the 1993 season they have failed to make the playoffs, although they still remain highly competitive. They have had a few star players in the team over the years, including Hall of Famer, Roberto Alomar. What follows are a few fun facts about the Toronto Blue Jays.

Toronto Blue Jays Trivia

The Toronto Blue Jays along with the Houston Astros are the only 2 teams in the Major Leagues who don’t feature a single letter in their cap logo. The Blue Jays, however, can be easily recognised by the Blue Jay and red maple leaf which feature on their cap logo.

There also only happens to be three teams in the entire baseball leagues whose actual team name happens to be two words. We know that Toronto are known as the Blue Jays, and the only other two teams to feature a two-word team name are Boston’s Red Sox and Chicago’s White Sox.

The Blue Jays have only ever once had one of their current players named as the American League’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) and that was George Bell back in 1987.

The Blue Jays played their first ever Major League baseball game on April 7, 1977. The game was particularly memorable due the vast amount of snow that covered the pitch, players and spectators, and which continued to fall throughout the game. The temperature plummeted to well below freezing, but 44,000 spectators still turned up to watch the game. Unfortunately for them the game was played in the Exhibition Centre, as their extremely famous SkyDome wasn’t built for another 12 years.

The SkyDome, which was also known as the Rogers Centre finally opened in 1989 and paved the way for many other retractable stadium roofs. However, the Blue Jays can be lauded as the first sports team to feature this type of stadium. The roof is constructed from various forms of steel, including steel panels, trusses and also corrugated steel. The roof moves at a rate of just over 70 feet per minute, even though it weighs well over 10,000 tonnes. If only the roof had been installed prior to the first game back in 1977 they could have kept the snow off the pitch and players.

The Blue Jays are currently owned by Rogers Communications, which makes them one of only three Major League Baseball teams to have corporate owners. The others are the Atlanta Braves, who are owned by Liberty Media, and the Seattle Mariners, who are owned by Nintendo (the American arm).

In 1993, only their 16th year in competitive baseball, they became the first team to hail from outside America to win a World Series. As mentioned above, they have unfortunately failed to make the playoffs ever since, although they have come very close on a number of occasions.

The author of this post, Nancy Baker, is a part of the team at OpenAire, a company providing sliding roofs across Canada and the United States. She enjoys reading in her free time.